- Players: 1
- Platforms:PS2
- Release Date:February 17th, 2004
- Developer: SCE Foster City Studio/Team Triad
- Publisher:Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Rating: Play It
Wow, what a game. What else can I honestly say? This is one of the most original and unique beat-’em-up, action-adventure games ever made. It mixes cinematic action-movie set pieces with a storyline that very well could have come from Chung Sun, Sammo Hung or John Woo crime-drama flick from the 1980s. This is one of those rare games where it wasn’t quite a licensed-based title themed around an accompanying film or big Hollywood production, but it has all the hallmark trappings of a licensed-based property with the inclusion of a lot of big Hong Kong stars attached to the product and it clearly shows. From the stunt choreography to the absolutely awesome motion-capture work done by Jet Li himself, this game hits almost all the right notes in almost all the right ways with a few exceptions.
Story
Jet Li’s Rise to Honor stars Jet Li as an undercover cop named Kit Yun. The story is just like every other Hong Kong-themed undercover crime-drama tale, and doesn’t really put any new twists or spins on it. In fact, if you play Rise to Honor and Sleeping Dogs you’ll see how the latter (from United Front Games) is essentially a beat-for-beat remake of the former, with the exception of it being a completely different game.
But so many of the elements in Rise to Honor – and in some cases, even the locations and the events that take places in those locations – are mimicked so clearly in Sleeping Dogs. While that game was always referred to as a spiritual successor to True Crime: Streets of LA, you could say it’s actually much closer to a spiritual re-imagining of Rise to Honor.
Jet Li’s Kit Yun is tasked with starting off as a bodyguard for a local Hong Kong crime boss, but things quickly escalate when the crime boss has his life put in danger by all manner of other evil criminals. There’s a bit of a twist involved that sees Kit having to travel to San Francisco to protect the daughter of the crime boss, and more mayhem ensues, as Kit gets involved in massive, explosive car wrecks on the streets of San Francisco, fisticuffs with bar bouncers, and fights with motorcycle riders, all before throwing hands at a convention center, a dock yard, and eventually making his way back to Hong Kong for a big showdown in a high rise.
The story isn’t going to tear down any new walls in regard to storytelling, it’s all there is a mostly basic vehicle in which to allow Corey Yuen – yes the world renown action stunt coordinator Corey Yuen – to setup action set pieces to give Jet Li’s Kit Yun plenty of places to run, fight, kick, punch, and shoot his way through hordes of enemies.
If you stripped out all of the over-the-top filler combat, you could easily see how this could have been an actual movie similar to other Jet Li vehicles like The Enforcer, or other popular Hong Kong films like Jack Chan’s Police Story series or John Woo’s Hard Boiled. In fact, there’s a shootout in a hospital that is an obvious nod from Yuen to Woo where Jet Li fights and (explosively) shoots his way through a hospital full of goons, a story and action-beat that Sleeping Dogs also imitated to a ‘T’ after the wedding massacre level.
Even still, you’ll find that the story is just enough to keep you synced in and hooked to see what happens next, even though you can see the plot points and story unfolding a mile away. It doesn’t detract from the awesome action set pieces that are constructed around the story to help give it a bit of meat.
360-Degree Combat System
Where Rise to Honor really shines is in its combat system. For the longest I actually avoided playing this game because it was revealed early on that the developers did away with the traditional face-button layout for the game and opted for an analog-stick fighting mechanism attached to the right stick on the PlayStation 2’s DualShock controller.
I remember initially thinking how stupid that was and how there’s no way you could play a beat-’em-up game using an analog stick. “How would you do the combos?” I scoffed; opting instead to get Jackie Chan’s Stuntmaster, which was actually a massive letdown compared to Rise to Honor.
The thing that makes Rise to Honor’s combat so good is that once you play it you can understand why they had to go with an analog approach. Jet Li’s movements are so fluid and on-point with analog stick movement, it just makes sense. He uses a lot of his traditional Wu Shu and Gong Fu techniques you’ve seen a dozen times over in his movies. You can actually tell it’s him doing the mo-cap work too based on how he snaps his movements at the end of each strike and the way he does his movements and poses.
The thing is is that his strikes are perfectly articulated to 360 movements of the analog, no matter where he’s standing or how he’s positioned. This is really groundbreaking stuff, even for today’s generation of games. Why? Because no matter where you flick the analog stick, Jet Li has a move for that direction – nay! He has a combo for that direction!
As you keep flicking the stick he keeps throwing out new moves on any opponents in that direction. You can seamlessly switch opponents mid-combo and he once again effortlessly combines strikes to make everything work. I have no idea just how many moves he actually has in the game, because the combos can just keep going so long as there’s someone to hit.
You really couldn’t do any other beat-’em-up game like this unless the characters were as versatile and fluid in movement as Jet Li, which is precisely why it works so well here and why it would probably be a disaster in other games. It sort of worked out with EA Sports’ Fight Night series, and they tried it again with the first EA Sports UFC title, but those games you’re only fighting in one-on-one scenarios.
Here you’re fighting multiple enemies at a time, and you need to act and react quickly as enemies will come from all sides. Jet Li will respond as quickly as the player can flick the analog and not miss a beat. I just don’t see how you could capture the same level of fluidity and precision using the face buttons, especially since there is no pause or gap or slow-down during the fights, so you really have to be instinctual with your reactions, and I just don’t think the mechanics would lend themselves to most players in a 360-degree environment where you’re trying to fight as fast as Jet Li while enemies are surrounding you at all sides. Simplifying it to the analog works well enough, and honestly the game is already hard as it is, and making the fights based around the face buttons would just make it unnecessarily harder than it needs to be.
Layered Counter/Defense System
Throwing hands and feet is just one aspect of the combat system in Rise to Honor, though. There’s a whole other layer to the system with counters and defensive mechanisms. This system is and is not like other games. You basically have three bars, the top one being your health, the middle one being your Adrenaline meter, and the bottom one being your defense stamina.
The defense stamina lets you know how many times you can block/dodge an attack before you have to disengage, rest and let the meter refill. The good part is that it only takes two seconds or so to refill the meter, but essentially it prevents you from just standing there and blocking every single enemy’s attack indefinitely.
You’re probably wondering, “So how do you get out of situations where five guys are all attacking you at once?”
Well, you actually have a counter for that.
The block/dodge button is R1 and the counter system requires you to hold down L1 while holding down R1 and then flicking the right analog stick in a direction, typically at the enemy attacking you.
If you get surrounded the tactics in the game are actually very similar to real-life: move!
While it is awesome to recreate the Jet Li fight scene from Fist of Legend where he’s in the dojo fighting a bunch of students at once and blocking and attacking them all at the same time, that is the sort of master-level skill only the most dedicated player would be able to imitate effectively. And yes, you can imitate that fight scene almost blow for blow.
The thing is, you can gewgaw your technique all day long once you’ve achieved it, but you first have to get there, and that is something that will likely require multiple playthroughs.
The most effective way to start out is just beating enemies quickly and countering enemies who dodge/block often.
Now the good part is that you don’t need perfect timing to block. If you don’t attack and simply block before an enemy attacks, Jet Li will dodge/block the attack. Be wary, though, some enemies will have long winded combos, so you’ll have to block/dodge all of the attacks until they finish, or launch a counter-strike in between their attacks, which works just as effectively.
The way the enemies are setup, sometimes your basic attacks just won’t work, so you will have to time their attacks and block and counter, or beat up other enemies and use your Adrenaline to perform devastating combos. This is a pretty standard special-move feature, but it’s executed so well because if you just hold down the L1 button by itself and not press anything, Jet Li will perform a short kata with some cool special effects. From there, you can then unleash some devastating blows on enemies. It looks as cool as it sounds.
Gunplay
Much like Sleeping Dogs, the gunplay in Rise to Honor is an afterthought. In fact, while the game allows you to hide and dodge gunfire, the aiming system is pretty atrocious. You basically use the right analog to select up to two targets (Jet Li dual-wields at all times whenever he gets his hands on a weapon) and then you just keep firing until everybody drops dead.
The skill level for the gunplay is pretty low, but I would be an impenitent curmudgeon to say it’s a dreadful waste, because in many ways… it’s not. It’s a nice break from the melee fights, and usually are used transitionally.
One office stage shootout is done quite well in fact, and makes me miss the old days of gaming where levels were designed to be fun and engrossing, rather than an annoying slog-fest. Here, most of the levels were designed to be fun, and the gunplay was always a nice homage to John Woo’s style of action-directing where lots of bullets fly everywhere, the environment gets completely destroyed – not quite on the level of Stranglehold – and there’s a nice satisfying feel to the way it all plays out, despite it’s abject simplicity.
Much like with the melee combat where you build up the Adrenaline meter with combos, you build up the meter by downing foes with your guns. Once it’s full, you can pull off a slow-motion shoot-dodge much like Max Payne. However, the way Jet Li handles his guns and the way the shootouts play out, they’re much closer to the likes of True Crime: Streets of LA. It’s not horrible, but it’s not great either. You’ll feel like it turns into Virtua Cop whenever these segments pop up, but the developers managed to do a lot with a little with the gunplay segments, especially in the hospital where you’re rolling down the hallway on a gurney blowing things up and shooting enemies in slow motion. It’s pure cinematic action-pɵrn!
Cinematic Fights
Speaking of cinematic, it must be highlighted just how cinematic some of the fight scenes are. In fact, you won’t be able to win a certain fight without relying on some Jet Li antics from his actual movies. In the dockyard there’s a cool boss fight where he has a weapon and you don’t. You can’t attack him head-on or you will get ripped to shreds.
There’s a really awesome psychology to the fight, insofar that you have to look for an opening and then attack. The highlight with Rise to Honor here is that this game doesn’t automate the attack/counter/dodge mechanics for you. You have to look for those openings and you have to be skilled enough to take them while avoid taking damage.
What ensues is quite the spectacle for a 2004 game. You can actually manage to imitate some of Jet Li’s fight choreography from his movies, where you dodge a slew of enemy attacks, throw a counter-punch only for the enemy to block it and throw a counter kick, only for you to counter with a kick of your own, only for the camera to go into a close-up slow-mo shot of the attack… that your opponent ducks!
This isn’t like Sleeping Dogs or Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham games where you can rely on simply tapping ‘X’ all the time and then tapping ‘Y’ to counter an enemy’s attack with a giant prompt over their head. No, no, no. Your counters can be countered here, and you can counter the counters countering your counters. That’s how deep this system goes.
Also, here, there are no prompts. You simply have to memorize the enemy’s attack patterns and know when to block/dodge/counter. It requires an all new level of skill that actually feels rewarding once you master how the system works. Again, high-level players will likely put on a clinic to showcase just how good you can be and just how dynamic the fights can look, not unlike Assassin’s Creed 3, which was probably the most skill-based and cinematic fighting system from the Assassin’s Creed series. The same logic applies.
The better you get at the game and its systems, the more awesome the fights will look, because the timing, reactions, counters, and combos will be based on how well you sync with the controls and the timing of the enemy’s attacks. I certainly wish more games approached fighting systems like this, but it would require a very talented martial artist who could pull off the moves believably, convincingly and fluidly the way Jet Li does in Rise to Honor.
Downsides
Now the game isn’t perfect. Even for a PS2 title the graphics sometimes seem to border on PSX level quality, in fact it reminded me a lot of Jackie Chan’s Stuntmaster. Jet Li’s face capture looks… okayish. Everyone else has blocky heads and boxy-bodies. The environments are passably decent for what they are, but it’s a rough looking game that certainly looks its age. You can now better understand why Nintendo opts for style over realism and why the games that do opt for that are seen as more timeless compared to their contemporaries of that same era.
However, outside of the low quality graphics, you will also have to deal with some annoying gameplay mechanics, too… or rather, lack of mechanics.
One of the things that always bothers me is when enemies can do things you can’t do. While Jet Li can grab, punch, kick, and sometimes utilize the environment to down his foes, what he can’t do is perform running jump kicks, which really severely limits how you can engage enemies, especially those at a distance. You also can’t do running slides… but some foes can do running attacks.
This actually puts poor ole Jet Li at a disadvantage – it’s not one he can’t overcome under the control of a player with a proper amount of skill, but it’s still annoying there’s no way to just do a running jump kick. It would have solved so many problems and avoided so many headaches.
Another downside is that the game has some stealth segments that are a pain; they’re long, tedious, and simply not fun. To make matters worse is that there is literally an entire sewer stage dedicated to stealth. Yes, an entire sewer stage in a martial arts Jet Li fighting game…. just why?!?!
Before the stage loaded in and I knew what it was, I was thinking to myself, “Whoa, it’s cool how they went the whole game without an annoying sewer stage!” and then they showed Jet Li sneaking into a sewer to get to the high rise. I’m thinking, “Why?!?!”
The sewer stage is ultra annoying because after the horrible stealth segments you have this ultra-long arena-style battle royale where you have to fight what seems like an endless horde of enemies. The good thing is that their health is low, but they’re still an absolute pain to fight, and with no checkpoints during that arena battle, it can take anywhere between an hour or two to get through. I’m not even kidding. The sewer segment is just atrocious and almost made me throw the controller at the wall.
The only other downside is the final boss fight. He’s not as obnoxious as some other final boss fights, and I do like that he’s not just a static punching bag or a bullet sponge like in some games, but he actually does put up a fight. The problem is that the third segment of the fight (remember, this is an old game where final boss fights had multiple parts) his dodging becomes annoying. Essentially you can only attack him while he’s running towards you and before he launches an attack, which sounds easy but the timing can be impossible. Alternatively you have to attack him from behind whenever you get a chance. Otherwise he just dodges, dodges, dodges, everything! You also can’t counter his attacks as he just counters your counters or dodges some more. This fight will also take anywhere between half an hour to an hour to complete because it just becomes strikingly tedious, and the fact that he can perform a throw you can’t dodge/block/counter makes the fight extra tedious.
Replayability
For expert players you can probably get through this game in about five or so hours. No one who just starts playing this game will be an expert, though. The mechanics and controls are unlike any other game out there and the timing and fight flow is completely different from every other beat-’em-up. That’s a good thing. But that also means it will likely take you between six and ten hours to complete the game on the first playthrough on the Normal difficulty setting. If you really are a masochist there is also a Hard difficulty setting, but I wasn’t too inclined to check that mode out given how impossibly hard the Normal setting was, especially that final sewer segment.
You will be rewarded for your efforts, though, both in terms of getting better at being able to perform moves and counter enemies, as well as unlocking bonus videos and other Jet Li costumes from his film Shaolin and Fist of Legend. The new costumes look pretty cool and either one still kind of fits the setting of the game. I particularly liked Jet Li’s monk outfit because it matched up well with the way he fights in the game, making him look extra boss.
Also, the way the game is structured it’s a prime candidate for playing over again just for the kicks (literally in some cases). The chapters are all unlocked once you beat the game the first time and you can go back and play through the levels in any order you want, including using the new outfits you’ve unlocked. It’s a shame it didn’t have a multiplayer mode, because it would have been pretty cool to do co-op or even a versus mode.
Still, given the easy-flow of the levels and the high-impact action sequencing, it’s one of those games you could easily go back and play just for the heck of it… other than maybe that atrocious sewer level or any of the stealth segments for that matter.
Overall
I really loved this game’s unique approach to fighting and countering. It’s cool that it requires so much skill to pull off flawless combos and also have the ability to dodge/counter so effortlessly without breaking the flow of the combos like in other games. It doesn’t punish you for being defensive.
I also really loved the soundtrack here, the game had its music done by renowned composer Raymond Chow, who scored films like Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle to name a few. It really helped set the cinematic tone for the game, and made it easy to think that it would have made for a great classic action flick.
If I had one major gripe that I would have liked to have seen in the game is a dojo stage – I can’t believe they didn’t take the opportunity to have Jet Li go into a dojo and beat the snot out of some evil students or something. Also, I would have replaced the entire sewer segment with Jet Li having to enter into the front of the office building and just beating guys up in the lobby, and then fighting his way toward the elevators, which he eventually does anyway. But instead of having the sewer stage, just have a lobby fight, and I think the game would have moved much closer to having a near perfect selection of levels.
In any case, Rise to Honor is still one of the best beat-’em-up action games ever made. While some of the other elements like the stealth and gunplay are extremely simplistic, having nothing on Metal Gear Solid or Max Payne, the actual fisticuffs are a top notch display of adept craftsmanship by the developers aided by Jet Li’s unparalleled martial arts skill. It all works together in a synergy that feels fluid, fun, skill-based and dynamic. It’s well worth playing for anyone who craves a really good, martial arts based action game.